top
as you can see the tray has been flipped.
between the tray and hd, the elastic is in an x shape, stops the movement a bit

front
foam holds the hd level, also stops movement.

bottom
used original tray screws, elastic was just sewing stuff with loops sewed on both sides(my mom did it- lol).

done using the hd tray so i could still take the hd out easily, pretty happy with it, works well- i felt the tray and it wasn't vibrating at all.
i know the pics seem bigger than they need to be, but when i resized them the file size increased.

I'm not sure if this is a new twist or not, since so many of the old photos are in the bit bucket. But its so simple I'd have no trouble believing its been done.

I needed to suspend my drive for several reasons, prime amongst them that the EAR grommets weren't cutting it. So I visited my local Michaels and couldn't find any elastic cord bigger than 1mm in diameter -- no go. Then I found some 5mm dia. bungees (15cm length) at the Home Despot.

Also, I didn't have a lot of room to work with. I wanted to suspend it in the 5.25" slot of a 2-slot cage in my mATX case. Additional criteria: I should be able to setup the whole case in either its horizontal or vertical position, and it should be easy to move around without treating it like a carton of eggs.

I tried the NoVibes approach of wrapping the bungee over and under the drive itself, but I wasn't good at it: the drive was too unstable, at an odd angle, and the tension seriously bent the cage.

I should have gotten a photo from underneath... all 4 drive mounting screws are in place. One tie wrap is around the screw and another tie wrap, which wraps the coiled bungee, which is tie wrapped to the cage.

Very secure and transportable, dirt cheap, simple, effective, compact, with excellent airflow. Downsides: no thermal conduction, and maybe too stiff. If it were looser, the drive might make even less noise, but its plenty good enough for me as it is.

What do you think -- a winner? Throw them tomatoes!

If I were more ambitous, I would reduce the number of coils from 4 down to 1 or 2. I used 4 only so that I didn't have to cut the bungees and secure their ends. As it is, the black tape in the photos covers the bungee hooks, which are hooked into each other and tie wrapped together. Plus they give it that coveted ghetto look.

I realize now that the 1 or 2 coil alternative wouldn't be much more work. Just cut to a length for the chosen #coils, plus an extra ~3cm on each end, and tie wrap the ends tightly.

the HDD rests on foam supports, cut out from the package material from the LC17 box. I've glued them together to form "corners" for the HD to rest on, and elastic clothes-type material is used to secure the HD to the chassis to make it stable for transport yet still mechanically decoupled from the case.

From top on:

Note also that the large 92mm fan cutouts on the chassis has been removed to allow unrestricted intake airflow; a foam wall is constructed with a 120mm Glacialtech fan within this wall such that the HD is thermally separated from the rest of the system. Air flows under, over the top, and the sides of the HD, being drawn through the 92mm intakes and driven by the fan onto the VGA card (off picture).
Silent, and keeps the HD cool as well!

This setup is from my main rig, housed in a Antec 3700BQE case.
The original configuration lasted 2 years, with the Seagate 7200.7 suspended from the drive cage horizontally and a salvaged 92mm Enermax fan also suspended below it using black clothes-type elastic stretchy material. This kept the rather loud vibration noise to a minimum and also kept the HD < 35deg in all conditions (minus fan, it can get up to 48deg on a warm day)

The second config only lasted 2 weeks. I needed a 2nd HD for archiving, so I used a spare SATA Samsung I had lying around. I realigned the drives vertically using transport foam wedged in between the drive cage and the drives as well as on the floor of the case.
A 120mm fan was positioned to the left of the drive cage to pull air via the front intakes, and I figured I would get airflow in between the drives and through the holes in the drive cage.
I got acceptable HD temps (<42deg with virus checking), but got unacceptably high vibration noise.
This photo is with the closest HD removed, showing the vertical configuration of the 2nd HD further away from the camera.

The final configuration, this time ditching the 3.5in 2nd HD and replaced with a 2.5in HD. Since I already had a USB enclosure, I figured I'd save some money instead of buying a 3.5 to 2.5in cable, and placed the whole USB/HD suspended inside the drive cage. The USB cable is tucked on the floor of the case, out through a spare PCI slot cover (slightly bent to allow the cable to pass through out to the back of the case) and plugged into a spare USB backplane slot.

A 92mm Nexus is suspended below the drives using cable ties under sight tension. So now I have a 2nd HD, setup for automatic backups, and silence...

My Seagate in a Coolermaster Centurion. Reduced vibration, but didn't reduce noise because the front bezel was so open. Increased temperatures too. I didn't trust this method for long-term use, so eventually I ditched suspension and bought a new case, in which I reviewed here.

They say that you do what you know. We'll woodworking is my hobby so there you go. Case is an Ahanix D-Vine MCE601. 1.83 Ghz Core Duo running two 250Gig Spinpoints Raid 0. I used 1mm StretchMagic. and a 92mm Adda ball bearing fan controlled by a fanmate 2. I'm using a Delta External Power Brick with a Minibox PW200M PSU, so I installed the drive enclosure to vent out, where the internal PSU would have gone.

MAgain... Prettymuch silenced my rig, I was wondering where that humming was comming from ;s.[img/]http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b383/RomeoEskobar/RomeoMethod.jpg[/img]

Hmm. Well, it's certainly not coming from the HDD, since it's not even plugged in.

Oh snap, I knew it was too good to be true ;[. I call it the "ultimate" hard drive silencing solution, don't have your drive plugged in to start with. Guaranteed 100% silent. But in reality I just don't want anybody to see my crappy cable job ;/.

here are 3 pics of how i suspended my hdd. well, "suspended" is a big word here, as it's just your regular laundry drying line found in the basement (who, in the first place, needed the 100m i found there? what kind of laundry monster?).

what you can't see is just a sinlge knot on the otehr side of the case. needed my third hand to make it tight.

the solution works fine - no vibrations, only humming and seeking noise. before that, my hdd was down front where it did't get any wind and would get hot pretty quickly. see my other threads if interested. (no? ok, nothing spectacular in fact, you're right)

also, as the hdd is in a zalman and gets wind from kama-bay it stays at 31 degrees. 33 was max i saw after some heavy file copying.

my next purchase is scythe quiet drive as the humming is now the loudest noise coming from my rig. i was reading a lot about bitumenboxes but i don't think i have the guts to do it, and skills too.

EDIT - fixed pics. Gave the case to my bro who still uses it with the suspension. Still works fine.

Last edited by kater on Fri May 11, 2007 1:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Besides the obvious: 2ea 3.5" HDDs suspended in my Evercase ECE3505 uATX case, the objectives are A) excellent point cooling of both HDDs, independent of any case openings, and B) sound blocked except towards the rear of the case.

The removable steel HDD cage is cut away except for the top and 0.4" of the sides to provide a secure removable support for the large structure.

A 5-sided rubber box with at least 3/16" walls holds the fan and HDDs, and is open to the rear of the case. I used buna (neoprene) sheet rubber from McMasters, page 3328, assembled with superglue. The total suspended weight is just under 4lb. Here's the basic idea:

The suspension details (and some construction details if you look closely). I used two (not four) 1.5mm Stretch Magic 5.9" bands (which stretch ~20%); the 1/8" aluminum rods are also from McMaster, page 3427:

The completed model in an empty case except for a dummy motherboard, with old HDDs (note truncated top of the steel HDD cage):

Ready to run with real HDDs and an airflow divider, mounted in my #2 computer:

Rubber-washer production. Note the bottom of the truncated steel HDD cage and the support rods. The center rod was discarded in the final version:

A Scythe 1000RPM 100mm fan cools the two HDDs (Samsung SP0822N, 7.4W idle and "Hitachi" 7K160, 4.9W idle) to 10C over room ambient. If the top HDD is also an SP80, its temp goes up another 1.5C.
--------------------------------------

By mounting the HDDs and their cooling fan in this enclosure, I can assemble a computer whose only other rotating part is a 220mm fan, replacing the exhaust and PSU 120mm fans (the floppy and optical drives are used every week or two for backup only). Thus, the 220mm fan's noise and vibration can be evaluated without contamination. But that's for another forum.

inspired by my success with the silicone tube, i made another setup in my sonataII with a rather noisy Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB

this time i attached the motherboard studs in the disk itself, securing them with an inserted large-head screw and a tightly tisted copper wire acting as a hose clamp. I ran the tube through the larger holes in the original Sonata disk tray and left the disk hanging upside down, in the lower part of the drive cage where the airflow is best.

For this picture i "un-cablegamied" the flat cable to make the arrangement more visible

it's only about an inch from the bottom of the case, if it falls, no big deal.

Well, depends on how it falls and what it falls on. My guess would be that a drive that falls flat on a hard surface during operation will likely be dead, even if it drops only an inch.

As things turned out, the drive just failed on its own without any kind of falling-down rubber-band-breaking incident occurring.

The new one is suspended in the floppy drive tray, hanging in the area where the hard drive tray would normally be, suspended by Stretch Magic. Due to my low airflow setup, temperatures are a bit high but not dangerously so.

This is the lower HD cabinet from a P180. Using 2cm wide, 2x40cm flat sewing elastic. It is attached to the HD's with 5.25'' bay-slider-screws; just made a small hole in the elastic with a sharp object first. It is fixed very secure, because the elastic tightens itself around the screwthread.

The loose ends can best be fixed with a safety needle. I only had one, so I also used paperclips

Wasn't entirely happy with the setup, I could still feel some vibrations transmitting to the case.
I figured the zip ties against the clamp and the bungey cord not being properly ensnared by the clamp couldn't be good.

I first thought of getting some smaller clamps but thought that using some automotive rubber tubbing to fill the gap would be a better option (cheaper and would provide additional vibration absorbtion)

I couldn't find any that matched the diameter so I ended using some soft transparent tubbing (the type used to carry water).

I am very please by the result, I can't feel any vibrations from the drive cage.

I am wondering if in the end that transparent plastic tubbing wasn't a better solution to use than black rubber tubbing, since I guess the rubber tubbing will have absorbed about the same kind of vibration as the bungey cord, while the transparent tubbing being harder would absorb a different range of vibrations. And it also have the added advantage of nicely holding the drives together.

A is a 22-18 uninsulated terminal, McMaster 7113K111, B is 18-14 7113K341, C 14-12 9388K11, D is a "flag" terminal, 73125K64. E is 1.5mm Stretch Magic, F is 1.8mm. As you can see, 1.8SM fits into the smallest of the terminals (although it's sorta snug). 1.5SM can fit twice in the two larger parts, but to fit into the flag terminal, the first SM has to be stretched to make it smaller, allowing the second strand to be inserted. I'm not sure either of these are needed, and so there may be no need at all for C... or even B. All of these terminals have holes for #6 screws. See McMaster.com pages 706, 707 or Mouser.com fig U on page 1214 (no flag terminal).

The next pic shows two crimping tools, one the traditional and one the $3 version sold by Harbor Freight.

I cut two 5" lengths of 1.8SM, two 7.3" lengths 1.5SM, and crimped A on each end with a flag terminal in the middle, and this is what I got:

Not shown, out of laziness but also for clarity, is the 100mm fan for spot cooling that sits between the two HDDs and blows up, cooling the bottom of the (upside-down) lower HDD and the bottom of the upper HDD. The bottoms are what get hot and need cooling.

The full twists are to increase friction at the flag terminal, so you can adjust the SM to level the HDDs. I left a rubber washer off so you could see the top connection easily. You don't really need the rod; a couple of 6-32 screws and nuts work fine, if a little slower to install and remove.

I claim some firsts here:

The skinniest and lightest HDD suspension ever.

The first use of one-strand "SM rubber bands" in SPCR (the others all have 2 strands).

I'll add more claims to my patent application as I think of them.

Oh, yes: that's an Athenatech A301 case, internally identical to a TJ08, stripped down to the basics. With this case, you have access to both sides of the suspension. For more on these cases, see here.

well, i've been a follower since well over 3 years (i think) and i believe it's time to show my HDD cage.

Got some ideas from this thread, looked a things, tried to do something neat and most off all, practical.

Unplug the cables, and off you go!

So as you can see, i've use aluminium bars, and rubber o-rings, 6 of them per drive. The key is to place them is a such way, all 3 axis are covered. You can toss this baby around, and everything is held in place. No vibrations, no noise, nothing, well i tought...

After 14 months holding this raid array, rings have started to crack. So no big deal, i'll put some new ones (inexpensive) and maybe look at something similar but in a different material... tygon tubes, silicone rings, we'll see.

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